Silence of the Lambs?

Earlier this week, the 48-year-old German national was frog-marched before the judge who will preside over his coming criminal trail, shackled at the ankles and waist, wearing an orange, Hannibal Lector-style one-piece jumpsuit.

All that was missing, really, was the face mask.

That – and a victim.

Schmidt is one of several VW executives implicated in the diesel “cheating” scandal. He is the former chief of the now-writhing-on-the-floor, hoping-for-mercy German car company’s Environmental and Engineering Center in Detroit. VW has thrown him – and six other executives and engineers – under the bus, having already agreed to plead guilty to multiple felony counts.

Not one of them identifying a single specific victim.

This is routine. Which doesn’t make it any less bizarre.

169 years in prison is a sentence harsher than the one meted out to Charles Manson (he has been up for parole several times already) and most run-of-the-mill killers, who generally serve about 20 years.

And they actually killed someone.

If Schmidt gets half the 169 years, he will spend the rest of his natural life behind bars.

What was his “crime” again?

He stands accused of attempted murder . . . of The Law.

And not even that, really.

A regulation.

An EPA-issued fatwa regarding acceptable levels of exhaust emissions. VW – well, Schmidt and the six other fall guys – traduced the EPA’s regulatory standards by programming or otherwise adjusting the ECU (the computer that controls the engine) of TDI diesel-powered VWs to pass the emissions tests required for certification prior to sale, but revert to more mileage-and-performance-friendly programming that resulted in slightly, imperceptibly, higher-than-allowed emissions once out on the road.

That’s it.

Which, by the way, is industry practice.

The car companies “build to the test,” meaning – they program the computers and set up the engines and transmissions to score the best-possible numbers on the government’s tests.

Even if, out in the real world, they operate differently.

Example: Automatic transmissions – the latest having eight, nine or even ten speeds – are programmed to upshift to the highest gears (which are all overdrive gears) to squeeze out the maximum-possible mileage (and soon, the least carbon dioxide “emissions” – that’s another rant) by cutting engine revs to the minimum. In some cars, the engine actually cuts itself off to coast at times. But out in the real world, without a Faberge Egg under the accelerator, the engine stays on and the transmission downshifts to keep the car moving at a decent clip – and from struggling to keep up.

Your mileage (and carbon “emissions”) will vary.

So why was VW singled out for a 1600s-style witch hunt? Because it was too blatant about its “cheating.” They admitted it. The execs should have said: Whoops! Our software must’ve had a glitch. We’ll fix that…

Kind of like – very much like – telling a cop you “didn’t realize how fast you were going” when you drove through his radar trap.

Now, there are two interesting aspects to this business. The first being, of course, the lack of any specific flesh-and-blood victim. It is very, very strange that you can put a man in prison for 169 years for affronting a regulation. That the punishment for such is more severe than that routinely meted out for actual crimes – those in which a flesh-and-blood human being has been brutalized, even killed.

This tells us in a very direct, no-nonsense way that the government is a lot less worried about murder and rape and suchlike than it is about people who defy its authority.

The extreme harshness of Schmidt’s prospective sentence and the billions of dollars in economic punishment rained down on VW the company ought to make this crystal clear.

Have the shysters who run the “Federal” Reserve and who cynically, deliberately manipulate the currency to make their fortunes while ruining the fortunes of countless millions ever been criminally prosecuted?

When the economy grenaded back in ’08 and serial financial criminality on Wall Street was found to be directly responsible, was anyone responsible looking down the barrel of 169 years in prison?

George Bush gleefully admitted to having people tortured on his say-so. Today he paints John Wayne Gacy-style watercolors in Texas.

Bear in mind the Supreme Court’s enunciation that law enforcement (the right term; as opposed to peace officers, which are not wanted) has no specific duty to protect the life of any individual citizen, or even his property. The thing the government – and the courts – are protective of is their prerogative.

“The law” must be obeyed.

It’s not much different, really, than it was in Henry VIII’s day, when men like Thomas More lost their heads not for any crime – properly speaking – but for less-than-genuflecting before the absolute authority of the sovereign. It’s no less scary because, in our time, the genuflecting is demanded of us not by a single absolute despot but rather by a beehive of them.

It may be worse – because there’s no focal point. The tyranny of bureaucracy rather than of one man.

This brings up another thing in the case of poor Schmidt, et al.

Who empowered the EPA to legislate?

Congress – the legislative branch of the government – did not write any laws regarding “bins” and “tiers” defining acceptable and not-acceptable levels of exhaust emissions. EPA ayatollahs – self-appointed – did. They are called regulations rather than laws, but it is a distinction without difference.

Like laws, regulations must be obeyed – or else.

Regulations have the same throw weight. As Schmidt, et al, are learning.

But, again: Who empowered the EPA – an “administration” – to legislate? It wasn’t Congress, which hasn’t got the constitutional authority to offload its legislative function onto unelected bureaucrats. No one within the EPA’s secular mosque was elected to their office. The ayatollas within are no more accountable to the voters than the bearded, ululating mullahs of Mecca.

It’s a key point – if this business about “consent of the governed” is anything more than Orwellian doublespeak.

Did you ever vote for “bins” and “tiers”? Did your congressman or senator? If not, what legitimacy do these “bins” and “tiers” have? There is a complete disconnect between the supposed democratic process we’re instructed to reverence and the authoritarian insolence of these unelected, almost all-powerful minions within “administrations” and “agencies” such as the EPA.

Innocent men like Schmidt – who hasn’t even been accused of hurting a specific anyone – face ruin and life in a cell – because bureaucrats have been affronted.

Meanwhile, the real criminals – inside and outside the apparat – pretty much do as they please.

It ought to make people angry.

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71 COMMENTS

Why VW?
The key words are “German national.”
All Germans (and those of us of German heritage) are evil bastards with black hearts and no conscience, you see.
So, it is no crime to destroy us. In fact, it is doing the world a service.
More or less like varmint, or maybe dangerous animal, control.

>Self-Driving Cars
Meticulous programming will allow these vehicles to achieve optimal efficiency. Traffic patterns free from the poor decisions of human operators (how many times have you dithered at a four-way stop or taken a few wrong turns before arriving at your destination?) will mean less time on the road, hence less time the vehicle is in operation and creating emissions.

Well, no, not really.
The poor decisions of computer route planners will have you sitting in traffic, idling your engine while going almost nowhere, while the intelligent human operator takes the less traveled side roads and arrives first.
Been there, done that.

It is all about controlling other peoples lives.

I expect human operation of motor vehicles to be banned, in the name of “preventing climate change,” once self-driving vehicles have been declared “safe,” whatever that might mean…

Agreed. One could walk unmolested down the street wearing a t shirt with Stalin’s face on it, carrying a Soviet flag. Try the same stunt wearing a T shirt with Hitler’s face on it… while carrying the flag of NS Germany.

Both appalling tyrannies. But Stalin’s Soviet Union and Stalin personally were by any objective metric the far worse of the two. Yet the opprobrium meted out is far less.

A couple years ago on RR 33(Big Spring to Big Lake)I was headed N, had already been stopped for a long time in road construction, this time without getting run over from behind, and was sick to death of it. I pulled up to the line waiting, got out and asked a guy in a company pickup if that little road to the west didn’t lead you around this mess. He was looking it up on a GPS program and said it did indeed and gave me directions. I pulled into the barditch, went around the flagman doing a 180 and back 1/4 mile to the county road following the pickup driver. A workaround about 5 miles long got me 4 miles further and around the construction which ended at the road that I took intersecting into RR 33. I avoided that construction zone countless times thereafter and saved countless hours in the process. My boss had been stopped that day for an hour waiting to go S. I shared the workaround with the whole company. Soon that little road was solid traffic but there wasn’t any waiting. Everybody else was using their GPS programs to drive and I used instinct of direction and some help from a guy who brought the map up. I bought a smart phone soon after.

This whole sordid affair defines what is wrong with laws anymore. They are created by whomever decides they want to make them.

I wish I would be the judge when this case comes to trial. I know it won’t happen, but I can dream, right?

After the show trial took place, the jury would be immediately dismissed. Then the judgment would be rendered against the Economic Prevention Agency and its loony-bin of apparatchiks. The defendant would be ordered freed, with recompense for his false arrest ordered. The funds looted from Volkswagen would be ordered returned, and the fines voided. The impounded vehicles would be ordered returned to the dealerships or former owners with a clean bill of health. The former head of the EPA would have a warrant issued for her arrest.

And any rule issued by the EPA without being passed first by Congress would be rescinded.

I did some research online a while back about vehicle emissions. I’d have to track it down again to prove this, but I’m sure someone can verify it. What I found was: there are just about as many tractor-trailers on USA highways as the “scandalous” VW diesels, and they are held to much lower pollution standards. In other words, tractor-trailers are allowed by law to produce a lot more pollutants then the VWs, which seems nonsensical in the extreme.

Why Steve? The semi truck has a very much larger engine by necessity than any VW has. A loaded semi-truck weighs 80,000 lbs, and a typical car weighs 3000 lbs. A loaded truck weighs more than 20 cars. Driving 20 cars will pollute and use far more fuel than 1 loaded semi-truck.

It’s all about crimes against the government. Did you see where a guy shot and killed a woman and her baby and the police slowly looked for the killer. Then that suspect shot and killed a cop and it was an all out man hunt. Crimes againt citizens take your time. Crimes against the government or their hinchmen and it’s all out war.

No, because trucks are still the best solution for product distribution to stores that everyone shops at. Those 20+ cars could not even come close to hauling the same freight as one truck. If you are worried that somehow trucking companies are getting breaks from the government; don’t be. The state and federal goons are constantly pestering and overtaxing trucking companies, and have been doing so for decades.

DOT regulations change on a yearly basis to simply collect revenue. So, a backup light on the tractor isn’t working right this minute and that’s $200 in a fine. Never mind that light serves no purpose. Yep, if you killed the engine, put the shifter in reverse, turned the key back on, you could walk back and see the backup light on. Other than that, I could never figure what it was for. You need a light better than that to back up to a trailer which has nothing to do with road safety. I know you were trucking when the law changed for that in Tx. They stopped every truck they could and basically checked for that and water in the wiper reservoir and if it would squirt in Sept. of 2015 when both went into effect. I lucked out on the backup light, bought one and put it on but I was still fined more than once when one didn’t work.

If only non-truckers got to go through the wringer for bs that doesn’t matter they’d shit a brick. Oh, I don’t mind paying $200 cause I just ran out of washer fluid and haven’t had a chance to stop and buy more…..another thing I clogged the cab with so I’d always be “in compliance”.

Not so amigo. You are assuming 20 cars put out more exhaust than a Cummins or a Cat or Detroit diesel pulling a grade. Not so.
All these engines are turbocharged with some serious manifold pressure. They do not have a problem with detonation, compression is limited only by the moving parts – the crankshaft, mains, rods, pistons, and cylinder heads. The displacement is in the range of 600 – over 1,000 cubic inches, 8+ liters to whatever: one cylinder is bigger than most car engines.
A whole lot more air passes through an over-the-road of around-town hauler than through 20 cars.
That means one truck feeds more trees than twenty cars.

Eric, you refer to the EPA as “Ayatollahs” but, they are not that at all. Ayatollahs believe in God, the folks at the EPA worship Earth Mother Gaia and they are the self-anointed, supreme deciders on behalf of this ball of minerals. Followers of Islam believe that God, Allah, will punish those that do not obey His commands. Those at the EPA and their lay acolytes see themselves as The Highest and are answerable to no one or no ultimate authority. They get their authority from taking control of the Police State.

Moslems believe in that fiction “Allah” invented by Mohammed to justify his perversions and give his army justification to rape and pillage, exactly as that system is used today. Translating “Allah” as God commits the logical fallacy of false equivalence. The proper translation of “Allah” into English is “Allah”.
God is God, creator of the universe, three persons of one essence, whose word is the only consistent explanation for life, the universe, and everything and who has been speaking to mankinwordd from the beginning.

Yes, that is a horrible byproduct of Islam. I suppose circumcision is not painless (I don’t remember at all), but at least it is mostly done to infants and is not as painful as what is done to girls by Moslems.
The genital mutilation of girls is equivalent to cutting off the end of a male penis. Done in typical Muslim fashion, as painfully as possible, and for no good reason at all, such as could be argued that circumcision helps keep things clean down there, it is a horrible torture. As Fred Reed put it, the way to end this horrible torture of girls and women is to castrate with a blowtorch every Moslem who decides to so mutilate a girl.
Now why are you discussing this on Eric Peters Autos?
We talk cars here, Pamela Geller produces an excellent report on Islam in general and another lady, can’t recall her name, an agriculturalist, who tells it as it is, explains FGM in her slide show and public speaking. Discover that lady and support her and Pamela Geller to expose the barbarity of FGM and eventually hit the sadistic Moslem men who perpetuate this hideous practice against females.

Another great article by Eric !
All the pieces of the agenda being directed against VW are present in this material. But they are not focused at the core of the issue.
We must come to understand that since most of “the government” is illegitimate, AKA a Bastard, it may fall at any moment. All that keeps it in power is the Fiat purse, AKA the Fed. It is used to dangle a carrot before the Mule, AKA us.
The whole damn thing is a Ponzi Scheme. It is debt based, AKA Usury, and must be held up by the transfer of money.
No debt, no creation of more money, the whole thing comes to a screeching halt.
The one thing virtually all of the mess we are experiencing has in common is the forced transfer of money from one entity to another: hit a pot hole, need a front end alignment, money flies, exceed a fake speed limit, money flies, legislate more bling in vehicles, money flies, add ethanol in fuel, destroy your equipment, money flies…All intentional, all supportive of the Ponzi, and all conceptualized by the Money Mongers and in service to the illusion of “consent of the governed”.
The Money Mongers act as brokers at all levels, extract their “Pound of Flesh” (go look up the origin of that term), and stay in power. We pay, they rule.
The VW debacle, along with all of the other rules, keep the Ponzi standing up. Any dissent from these rules constitute the violation which will be used to “teach us who is in charge”.
We are seeing the continuation of WW II by economic means against Germany and much of the rest of the world. This is American Fascism at its best.
2005 Passat TDI
1988 Citroën 2CV6

I don’t have to imagine. When I was a kid, you could smoke on the city bus, in the grocery store, restaurants, at work & even some areas in hospitals. It sure sucks getting old. Not so much for the aches & pains, but remembering that Once Upon A Time, this was a free country.

The reason smoking got banned is because far too many, I’ll go far as saying most smokers don’t keep their habit to themselves, but subject others to it. This society deals with bad behavior of even a few with laws. So we get laws. One kid gets out of line the whole class suffers.

The smoking bans have greatly improved things for me. I dealt with smokers for years and no matter how I tried to avoid the smoke they would find it necessary to pollute every corner of a public or commercial space. They also put their sigs at rest such that the smoke goes away from them so no smokers were dealing it with more than they were. To say anything about it of course risked a fight.

While I don’t like the bans I don’t miss dealing with the behaviors of smokers where it has been banned.

Smoking is one of those things that became a problem because of incivility – and a flawed understanding of property rights.

For the same reason I try not to fart in the presence of others, I would not smoke in their presence unless I knew it was not an issue for them – or I was in my house, or in a house or bar or what have you owned by someone who permitted it.

But we have this nonsense about privately owned property being “public.” And we had uncivil people who would do the equivalent of purposely farting in a confined space by lighting up in these “public” areas.

I think one can make a case for a smoking ban in truly “public” buildings – those we’re all forced to pay for and to use, such as government offices, etc. And subways and so on.

But the rest should be up to the owners of the property. If they decide to allow smoking, that ought to be their choice to make as it’s their property and they’re paying for it. Unless you’re forced to be on that property – and I don’t see how that happens – you’re free to leave, which is the proper recourse, if you prefer not to be around smoking (or whatever).

If you’re outside, try to be decent and avoid enveloping people in smoke who may not be happy to receive your fumes – just as it’s the decent thing to do, if you have to fart when out and and about, to take a few steps away from people so that they don’t have to smell or, or at least only get a partial whiff!

I’m trying to grok where we’re in disagreement. I don’t want to hear rap on my property – just as I don’t allow smoking in my home. But if I visit your home, I will abide your rap (and smoking) without complaint, or I’ll simply not come over.

How’s that being a half-assed Libertarian?

There is the issue of the general outdoors. Personally, I consider it rude to play any type of music such that it might annoy other people who don’t want to hear it but who are forced to endure it. For example, the asshole neighbor who played rap so loud I could feel the bass at my place a quarter-mile away. It’s a dick thing to do, as a matter of common courtesy. People behave like animals, though. And – voila – we get Laws.

The notion that mankind can cause the entire world to turn into a second Venus is a fiction invented by Margaret Thacher to promote nuclear power generation.. It is no small irony how dangerous she made CO2 out to be. The fact of the matter is that the northern half of the world gets warmer in summer and the southern half of the globe gets warmer in their summer which is our winter when it get very cold in North Dakota and cold in New Mexico and souther Cal and Florida as well.
There is no runaway environmental change.

The fact that they’ve had to resort to the use of the term, “climate change” is a measure of their dishonesty and their desperation. The old terms – “global cooling” and “global warming” had become embarrassing and hard to defend; enter “climate change” – which is vile as a scientific term because it is meaningless. And purposefully dishonest. The Earth’s climate always changes. It never stays the same. But now, this natural cyclical ebb and flow is pathologized. Any cold winter or warm summer or flood or snowstorm… climate change! Danger, danger Will Robinson!

If a real problem existed, they’d be able to define it objectively – which would be scientific. But they can’t or won’t – which tells you it isn’t.

“It may be worse – because there’s no focal point. The tyranny of bureaucracy rather than of one man.”

Indeed, but it goes even deeper.
As Lew Rockwell points out, it’s about legitimacy.
In a “democracy”, the voters are led to believe their vote somehow gives consent to be dictated about, and thus the dictators’ decrees are legitimate.
So, not only is any anger diminished by the lack of fous, it’s dissipated by “really being all our fault”.

As to VW itself:
Basically, VW was being used in an commercial sphere the same way Serbia was used in a foreign policy sphere:
In the former, foreign competition, and maybe even the people in Berlin were being shown who makes the rules, in the latter, Russia was being shown who’s number 1.

Look how the b**ch in Berlin came to the aid of VW.
Why they addmitted to this so quickly, who the heck knows?

Why the execs from Detroit that are German nationals didn’t high-tail it right back home immediately, who knows.
Normally they couldn’t have been extradited.
Then again, who knows what kind of exception Angie would’ve made in that case?

BTW, Germany is slowly killing off the Diesel anyway, ever more cities are banning Diesels because of the “smog / particle” BS.
Sure, some of the newest still pass, for now, but are getting so expensive, any savings the better mileage still may afford, is hard to realize.

One really has to drive well above average annual miles to make any net gain. And the longevity of old isn’t there naymore either…

EPA is an executive branch agency. The president can end this nonsense with a memo ordering everyone at the EPA to stand down and leave VW alone. If a case like this one is already being prosecuted, the AG can shut it down with a single order. Why hasn’t this been done?

Ed, I recently read that after a meeting with Trump and the head dick at the EPA they had given a lot of people an advance warning of layoffs. I guess we’ll see if the memo Nixon wrote to create it can be uncreated with a memo from Trump.

And the pc crowd is still urging violence to Trump and views Libertarians as gun-totin, bible-thumpin, racist wackos who need to be disarmed. I’m ready whenever they are. Oh wait, they want mama govt. to do their dirty work.

I’ve been saying it since I was a KID- that liberals/Dumbocrats are the American version of communists. People used to laugh at me. Now they’re finally seeing that it’s blatantly true. Now that it’s too late to do anything about it.

VW harmed TWO victims: one, as you noted, was Uncle. The second was Mother Gaia. That’s why they can justify the harsher sentence. Remember, to these true-believers, humans are parasites of the earth. Murderers are no real problem (unless you’re whitey murdering a protected class). These people celebrate Mao and Stalin, after all. But harm a tree? Into the volcano you go!

The whole crux of the problem is that people blindly believe in AGW. Take that away, and there’s no need for the EPA. Some guy I know was having a cardiac over the possibility of Trump slashing the EPA budget. You literally cannot get through to these people the truth about AGW. I’ve asked him many times to prove his position, and every link he gives me is NYT this and .gov that. You know, not “fake news” or “alternative facts”. This is what we’re up against. They cannot be reasoned with. They’ll have to be destroyed.

I have been saying for years, that greenies want to send people to prison for “pollution”. Now it has come to be. They will push hard for more now that they have a prominent victim. Look to pressuring indictments against fuel and coal companies, lumber cutting and processing, manufacturing, more gas powered car companies.

It all boils down to the fact that children enter into the system when mere babes- spending their waking ours in indoctrination camps, and continuing the brainwashing at home via the media- so that before they are even adolescents, they learn to believe in the system, and it’s aganda, and to never question it’s agenda or decrees (even were capable of critical thinking) – So if Uncle says you’re a criminal because you gamed their system so that your cars put out .00002PPM of something instead of .00001 PPM, then you have committed blasphemy and apostasy. Go out and kill a few people or rape some children, and your sentence won’t be as bad….but openly defy or trick Massuh, and then the consequences are serious.

Gaia creates NOx naturally. Unless a particular EPA containment zone had an usually high number of VW diesels on the road the VW’s additional effects over government specification was irrelevant. Of course they won’t teach the masses that NOx is naturally created and only a problem when created faster than nature can deal with it.

All of this regulatory BS came about because Congress critters are too frickin lazy to do their jobs. As has been pointed out here many times the “Con”stitution gives Congress sole authority to make law, yet they’re all too busy going to fundraising parties surrounded by suck ups looking for favors. While my friends and I were being shipped en mass to the undeclared therefore unconstitutional war in Vietnam they passed the totally unnecessary “war powers act” that epitomized their complete spinelessness; the gist of it being that the president could send troops anyplace he felt like but would have to withdraw them in 30(I think, maybe more) days if Congress did NOTHING. That about sums up their usefulness – throw them in the woods and don’t even bother to feed them fish heads.

Mike, I don’t think that a lack of spine is the problem that the congress critters have. Their problem is that they are very immoral people who usually vote based upon campaign contributions. I have the opposite view of Hanlon when it comes to politicians: Never attribute to spinelessness or stupidity that which is adequately explained by corruption or malice. Politicians are NOT ‘just like us’. Few of us desire to rule over others or would destroy peoples lives and property in exchange for increased power and money. They actually try very hard to get into office to do exactly those very things!

Right on Brian. They’ll work their ever-lovin ass off to get re-elected or to keep the dough rollin in. Their promises when they campaign are nothing but rhetoric to them. Once in, you vote how the money flows and if two opposing influential sources of money are in question you attempt to straddle the fence, hopefully, forever and reap more money from each party. Hell, I could do that…..you could do that…..most anyone could do that……but they’re not politicians and that’s the difference. Same thing goes on at work and we call those people suck-ups….and they’ll do it just for a pat on the head.

todd, this country has been manipulated by the powerful to create a culture where both parents have to work and to look only to the end of the day or tomorrow but never the long picture. This helps create the environment of parents using the govt. school for a babysitter and supporting whatever bs crap that’s done there. Few parents will say “screw it” and find a private school for their kids and every day politicians whose main goal in life is to remain a politician will do everything they can to see those of a different mind are hounded mercilessly. The state is always the first to use the old “for the chilluns” reason to take away any and every liberty.

There’s a good scene in Hangover 3 where one guy has been murdered and the good friend of the 3 characters is liable to be murdered in a few hours. The idiot savant, immature one is schooling the other on what’s most important, his smart phone and the 60 plus apps on it that represent countless hours of time and money spent on this phone.

My wife used to work with a dozen other women and they just couldn’t believe my wife didn’t have a smart phone but almost all those women only knew how to use Facebook and cause strife in others lives with no knowledge their phone was a computer tied to the internet capable of being one hell of a tool rather than just costing their employer a great deal of lost time. They’d draw against next week’s paycheck if allowed to go get the latest phone for themselves and their kids. I now see some companies who list a smart phone as one of their criteria for employment. Yes, I know, I’m just an old lump of coal.

It’s not impossible for one parent to stay home. My wife stays home. I don’t make a huge salary. It comes down to choices. My “peers” make the same as I do and with two incomes they still struggle. It is all about wants. Public school is free and therefore easy. Most peoples priority is not to raise their kid, it is to buy stuff and stay distracted.

Yes, you can make it on one wage if it’s a decent job but you can’t buy the latest iphone or ipad and go out to eat every meal. We’ve always had it our way…..at home. We can’t afford to eat at any restaurant we would like the food on any regular basis. Think about how much the average family spends on one trip to a fast food chain, multiply that by twice a day every day and that’s quite a bit of money.

Everyone worries about the price of fuel but that’s the cheapest thing they buy every day.

I’ve often wondered what the sales of freezers is like now. We’re still old school and have frozen everything from veggies to wild pig, venison, and the occasional half beef. Canning is a lost art and that’s what we grew up eating and it was damned good. It’s not easy to find canning jars now.

Hey, 8, Can one even buy a REAL freezer anymore? i.e. not one of them self-defrosting piece-of-junks that negates the whole purpose of having a freezer?

I used to have a small real freezer- real small, but the kind you defrost manually. Cost $149 and worked great for 10 years- until the compressor locked up tighter than a Jew’s purse. Now I see you can no longer buy small freezers that aren’t self-destructing…err…self-defrosting. (I don’t need it anyway, not planning on butchering another steer)- I don’t know if they still sell non-self-defrosting big freezers or not….

Nunzio, chest freezers are still available. The freezer we have was bought new in 1980 and has had a rough row to hoe being the barn it’s whole life, often in the sun. I was just discussing yesterday with an acquaintance the year we had two days of 118, one hell of a summer. We followed that up a year later with a -17 winter day. 2 years ago our winter was the coldest winter overall we ever had(global warming), used over twice as much propane as in any winter. The past year was record and near record highs from April to the end of the year. No way to predict long term weather in west Tx.

Jury nullification is something that is needed now more than ever before. Beginning in k-12, people need it pounded into their heads that when you go on a jury, YOU are the boss. YOU decide cases on ALL the merits and YOU ignore whatever some judge or prosecutor says. YOU have the right to tell the judge and the prosecutor to kiss your ass.

Secondly, I sincerely hope, as we speak, several other car companies have found ways to feed Uncle a load of horseshit on many of these issues. But please guys, only do this if you won’t get caught. And if you do get caught, you bankrupt the company defending all involved. You run that sucker into the ground so there are no bones for Uncle to pick.

The Kahn Academy put together by Sal Kahn is free homeschooling curriculum. Secular, but free. There are some 20,000,000 children learning from him right now in the safety of their own homes instead of the transgendered-administered, gun-free, shooting galleries called public schools.
The Ron Paul Curriculum isn’t free, but the history is what actually happened and the economics you will find nowhere else, they actually expose the banking cartel/fed for what it is and what it does.

I did.
1215, the year of the Magna Carta.
I attended several of the meetings. But Bill Thornton has effectively retired and I haven’t heard of anyone with his elan to lead the group. Except for Bill, the rest of us were broke, tired, beaten from our struggle to survive the State and take back the Common Law. Bill was a ray of hope and confidence, what we all want to be, winners who know how to take the fight to leviathan and force leviathan to follow law.

“The primary function of the independent juror is not, as many think, to dispense punishment to fellow citizens accused of breaking various laws, but rather to protect fellow citizens from the tyrannical abuses of power by government.”

The Constitution guarantees you the right to trial by jury. This means that government must bring its case before a jury of The People if government wants to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property.”

“DUTY OF THE DUTY OF THE INDEPENDENT GRAND JURY – If anyone’s unalienable rights have been violated, or removed, without a legal sentence of their peers, from their lands, home, liberties or lawful right, we [the twenty-five] shall straightway restore them. And if a dispute shall arise concerning this matter it shall be settled according to the judgment of the twenty-five Grand Jurors, the sureties of the peace. MAGNA CARTA, JUNE 15, A.D. 1215, 52.”

When they sent me a letter, I replied, and got excused PERMANENTLY! Told them I would not convict anyone of a victimless crime, nor of anything which the government does not have a right to Constitutionally enforce.

You KNOW they don’t want me.

Sad thing is, the lives of the accused are in the hands of 12 people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty. If they’d prosecute people here for anything other than drug possession or DWI; and mandate restitution and punitive damages for real crimes, instead of caging, I might have kept my moth shut and “served”.

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Eric started out writing about cars for mainstream media outlets such as The Washington Times, Detroit News and Free Press, Investors Business Daily, The American Spectator, National Review, The Chicago Tribune and Wall Street Journal.